Page:Philosophical Review Volume 6.djvu/295

No. 3.] these sanctions. But these sanctions are merely the constant antecedents—the causes, not the reasons—of altruistic morality. The fact of self-sacrifice is thus explained, by being related to other facts; the ethical value of the fact is not explained. The might of the altruistic impulse is exhibited, and accounted for; its right is not vindicated. The question of ethics as a normative science is not: How has a certain type of conduct or character come to be approved? but, What is the basis or rationale of such approval? and the only answer to this question is a substantiation of the claim of the conduct or character in question as the claim of some ultimate ideal or Good. Or take the closely related problem of moral obligation. The solution offered by the psychological and evolutionary moralists is an account of how man's consciousness of obligation has varied with the varying conditions of human life, how the police force of the external sanctions has gradually given place to the gentler yet more persuasive influence of a growing insight into the necessary consequences of his actions, and how even this coercion is destined ultimately to disappear in the spontaneity of a perfect moral life. But again, the question of ethics as a normative science is not: What is the actual nature and genesis of the consciousness of obligation? but, What is the content of this consciousness? What does it, fairly interpreted, tell us about man's true attitude toward himself, his fellow-men, and God? Take, finally, the psychological and evolutionary—the genetic—account of the moral ideal itself. The plausibility of Hedonism is chiefly due, in my opinion, to the confusion of the scientific description of the motivation of conduct with it appreciation in terms of an ideal, its evaluation in terms of some standard of value. The function of pleasure in the process of conduct, as an efficient cause in all human activity, is unquestionable, and it was useless for the advocates of the life 'according to right reason' to attempt the disproof of its presence and decisive operation at every point. But the fact that every choice is pleasant does not prove that it is a choice